OTTAWA — An eight-storey condo proposed for Bank Street south of Billings Bridge is exactly the sort of thing city council had in mind when it approved a redevelopment plan for that strip last spring, says planning committee chairman Peter Hume. But the man building it says he’s never doing it again.

“It’s very slow,” said Elias Ayoub, whose usual job is running The Cigar Man tobacco store on the next block and who bought the land at Bank and Evans Boulevard as an investment. “It’s taken six months for them to give us the approval.”

Ayoub conceded it’s his first time trying such a big project, but he’s been frustrated by new demands from the planning department as the process has dragged on — $100,000 for sidewalk improvements, $135,000 for a landscaping plan. “I wish they’d give us everything at the same time,” he said. “It adds up to quite a bit of money.”

All the trouble comes despite firm support from Hume, who is Ayoub’s local councillor in addition to chairing city council’s planning committee. At the city’s contentious planning summit earlier this year, Hume pointed to Ayoub’s proposal as a great example of what the city is trying to do with a raft of new “community design plans,” which are meant to get out in front of redevelopment plans in populated areas before they start neighbourhood wars.

Such a plan for Bank Street is aimed at making the stretch of Bank between Riverside Drive and the railway north of South Keys more urban and less a series of strip plazas and parking lots. The idea is to slowly, probably over decades, turn Bank Street south of the Rideau River into a long, pedestrian-friendly street with a lot of people living on it. Ayoub’s 49-unit building would be the first significant project completed under the new plan, though it’s been in the works since before the plan took effect.

Planted on the northern edge of a major development centre at Bank Street and Heron Road, it is to replace an auto-repair shop and a dry cleaner that have a big parking lot out front facing Bank with a mid-rise tower of the type that’s increasingly common downtown: one with condos up top and storefronts on the ground floor right up against the sidewalk. Instead of parking at ground level, the building is to have an underground garage, and is to be clad in grey brick with black detailing, including multiple balconies and terraces (it’s actually toned down a bit from an earlier version, which the city’s architecture review panel thought was too fussy).

It won’t take a rezoning, because the community design plan has already put permissive rules in place on Bank to encourage redevelopments. All that is needed is “site-plan approval,” which deals with comparatively minor things like traffic patterns and parking.

Ayoub’s project got the thumbs-up from the planning department last week and he understands all that’s left is drafting the legal language.

“This project is exactly what the Bank Street CDP hoped to generate and I hope that this sends a positive signal to the development community that Bank Street is an opportunity both in the short and longer term,” Hume wrote in an email Monday, a legal holiday at City Hall. “Stay within the CDP generated zoning then the site plans and building permits are all you are going to need to get going, and at that those things will only take mere months.”

Hume is particularly pleased that someone like Ayoub would take up the challenge, he wrote, rather than a big-name developer. It’s a sign that efforts to make development approvals easier are working, he said.

Two condo projects elsewhere — Minto’s Upper West on Richmond Road at Broadview and Windmill Development Group’s The Eddy on Wellington Street east of Parkdale — have also been approved under new community design plans with minimal fuss, Hume wrote.

Ayoub said Hume has been to see him twice and he appreciates the councillor’s backing, but he’s still swearing off any repeats. “Too much hassle.”

dreevely@ottawacitizen.com

ottawacitizen.com/greaterottawa

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Small builder behind showpiece development on Bank Street swears off repeats

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